The prospect of a free trade agreement between the European Union and the South American trade bloc Mercosur has rekindled the anger of farmers across Europe. In France, the day of Monday, November 18th, was marked by blockades across the country. The French Minister of Agriculture claims to be opposed to the agreement, as does the president, but the Ministry of the Interior has announced its intention to take a stand and apply “zero tolerance” to blockades.
Since the previous crisis under Gabriel Attal’s government, the anger of French farmers, at the heart of a European protest movement, has not really subsided. The implementation of improvement measures promised by Attal has been slowed by the dissolution of the National Assembly in the summer. Worried about the outcome of the European Union’s proposed free trade agreement with the Mercosur countries, two of the main farming unions have decided to renew their protests on Monday and Tuesday, the dates of the G20 summit in Brazil. Despite statements by President Emmanuel Macron that he would “continue to oppose” a treaty that is widely seen as contrary to the interests of French agriculture, they intend to keep up the pressure and assert their categorical opposition to an agreement imposed by Brussels and the European Commission. Despite this hostility, the Commission seems determined to sign the agreement, which will enable Latin American countries to sell more beef, chicken, and sugar duty-free in Europe, by the end of the year.
Farmers throughout France are taking different kinds of action. They are trying to avoid motorway blockades, as in the previous phase of protests, so as not to alienate the public. In Limoges, for example, in central France, a rally was held in front of the Haute-Vienne prefecture on the night of Sunday 17th to Monday 18th. Numerous signs coming from entrances and exits of cities were hung on the gates to show the anger of the farmers. Across France, farmers are turning over signs at the entrances to their towns as a sign of protest. Elsewhere, ‘fires of anger’ are being lit, and farmers are gathering at roundabouts, as they did at the time of the Yellow Vests movement in 2018. For Damien Greffin, vice-president of the FNSEA, the main farming union, this is a “battle for society.”
A symbolic blockade took place on Sunday evening near Villacoublay military air base, a few kilometres from Paris, from where Emmanuel Macron flew to Argentina on Saturday. Around twenty tractors and thirty other vehicles and farm machinery were gathered there. Valérie Pécresse, president of the Ile-de-France region, came to support the demonstrators, and said she had confidence in Prime Minister Michel Barnier to defend them, as a former agriculture minister who “knows the subject inside out,” she declared.
Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard, who, like Pécresse, comes from Les Républicains, is personally hostile to the agreement with Mercosur. Speaking to France Bleu, a regional radio station, on Monday, November 18th, she explained that negotiations were currently underway with European Union countries to create “a veto minority.” On Friday, during a visit to Besançon, she had already explained: “We don’t compromise on sovereignty and we don’t hand over our proud industries to international competition.”
Genevard says she is in bilateral discussions with other countries that are also sceptical about the agreement, such as the Netherlands, Italy, and Poland: “We are not alone in this fight, there are several countries asking exactly the same questions as us. A great deal of diplomatic work is being done today,” she explained.
The minister acknowledged the degree of exasperation felt by farmers against a backdrop of repeated health and weather crises. She highlighted the reforms underway, such as social and tax relief, the reform of agricultural pensions to take into account the best 25 years of work, and the single administrative control—a measure eagerly awaited by farmers who suffer from the cumbersome nature of an ill-adapted and omnipresent administration—but acknowledged that “it will take time for all these measures to reach the farmyards.”
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, on the other hand, has declared that he intends to show the utmost firmness towards angry farmers and will not tolerate any lasting blockades. “No attacks on property, no attacks on people, and no entrenchment, no lasting blockades, because otherwise there will be zero tolerance,” he explained, not ruling out the use of police against the farmers if necessary. These are clumsy statements on his part: the paradox is that, through this attitude, he finds himself supporting a free-trade project that runs counter to his declared ‘right-wing’ stance. In a concession to the movement, however, he made a point of distinguishing the farmers’ mobilisation from that of the railway workers, saying that the latter “regularly take working French people hostage”, while the farmers “can no longer make a living from the fruits of their labour.”
Marine Le Pen gave her warm support to farmers on X. At a politically delicate time for her, following a prosecutor’s indictment against her and her party, she knows that she can count on the popular support of farmers, a section of the electorate that is very much behind her. “Our farmers represent the heart of France, the France of yesterday, today and tomorrow,” she defended.
